Most environments are provided with one or more lighting devices in the form of one or more luminaires for illuminating the environment so that occupants can find their way about and/or see objects within the environment, typically flooding the environment with light generally, or at least part of it. Other types of lighting device include for example luminaires for providing lighting effects, e.g. as part of a light show or stage lighting.
Traditionally the lights are controlled by means of the user manually pressing a light switch or turning a dimmer switch. Nowadays, lights can also be controlled remotely via another device such as a user terminal, and even a mobile user terminal such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer. To do so (e.g. in response to a user input), the controlling device transmits one or more lighting control commands via a network, destined for a receive-side control unit of the lighting system. This involves a suitable transmitter of the controlling device which is used to send the lighting control commands to an interface of the network, from whence the command message is directed onwards over the network to its destination.
For example, one possibility is to control the lights via Wi-Fi. In this case the network comprises at least an interface in the form of a wireless access point configured to operate in accordance with a Wi-Fi communications standard, and the controlling device (e.g. user terminal) comprises a corresponding transmitter configured to connect to the access point using Wi-Fi. The controlling device can then send lighting control commands to the lighting system via this connection with the access point, the command messages being sent onwards from the access point to the lighting system's own controller.
In another example, the lights may be controlled via another short-range RF access technology in the form of ZigBee. In this case a conventional access point may not be involved, e.g. the transmitter on the controlling device may be configured to use a ZigBee communications standard to send one or more control commands to a corresponding ZigBee bridge or central controller interface of the lighting system which forwards the control commands to the particular luminaire.
Converting a traditional lighting system to a remote controlled lighting system can be costly and require the removal of serviceable equipment. To reduce the cost the components of devices, such as switches, sensors and light units may be packaged as pre-configured or ‘ConnectedReady’ devices. Such preconfigured or ‘ConnectedReady’ devices are packaged and sold to operate together as an independent set and communicate directly with each other. For example a switch and light unit can be pre-configured together and sold to be installed in a room to replace a traditional lighting system for a room when the light unit or switch unit in the room fails.
Such ‘ConnectedReady’ package furthermore may be configured to be expandable in that a central control unit or bridge may be installed at a later time and all of the devices configured to operate with the central control unit or bridge. In such systems only the switches, sensors and light units which need to be replaced are replaced and the ability to add a central control unit enables the cost to be spread as well as reducing the amount of waste caused by scrapping or disposing usable equipment.
In such packages the actuator device (such as the light unit) and the control device (the wall switch) can be pre-commissioned and configured to work independently of other devices. As such they can be considered to have their own private communications network (such as ZigBee network).
The operation of upgrading the pre-configured sets or packages of devices to a centrally controlled network such as HUE system requires user actions to be performed in a specific order or the connected ready devices may not work correctly within the network. Furthermore the operation of upgrading a large number of connected ready devices furthermore may require a significant amount of time to fine tune the installation process.
For example to configure a simple pre-configured (or ‘ConnectedReady’) package such as a light unit and wall switch to a connected ‘bridge’ network (or Hue network) the user must separately reset the light unit and the wall switch to the factory reset or factory new mode. Then the user must instruct the controller unit or bridge to search for the ‘new’ devices. Furthermore the bridge has to be configured in order to bind the wall switch to the light unit. Although this example is simple where the user has a large number of packages to configure (such as a complete home conversion from pre-configured to bridge network setup) with many actuators and controllers to configure the configuration may become very complex and the possibility of errors leading to a connected system which cannot control all of the light units correctly is high.